TEXTS IN ENGLISH

One of the first English accounts of Lucca dates to the end of the 16th century and was written by Fynes Moryson (1566 – 1630) in An Itinerary Containing His Ten Yeeres Travell where he describes the resourcefulness and spirit of the city’s mercantile class. Others that visited and wrote about Lucca are writer John Evelyn (1620 – 1706), naturalist John Ray (1627 – 1705), journalist Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719), historian Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794), writer William Thomas Beckford (1760 – 1844), priest John Chetwode Eustace (1762 – 1815), essayist John Ruskin (1819 – 1900), writer Frances Minto Elliot (1820 – 1898), American novelists Henry James (1843 – 1916) and William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920), diplomat Montgomery Carmichael (1857 – 1936) and so on. The tragic discovery of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s body near Viareggio following a shipwreck on 18 July 1822 indelibly designated Lucca and its territory as a mandatory Grand Tour destination for young English Romanticists while in Italy.

All this gave rise to scholars, travelers, and European noble families arriving and establishing residences in Lucca. Often they would bring books with them or set up their own home libraries, consequently many volumes have remained in the territory and bear witness to stories of culture, life, and social interaction.

It is through this extraordinary, secular journey, a magical, timeless play of setting up, taking apart, and reassembling libraries of all types, that the volumes have found their way to our shelves.

The catalogue with the index cards of these volumes is divided by language and section and can be consulted online.Images are sent upon request. We ship weekly all over the world.

“Overflowing [in Lucca] with everything that makes for ease, for plenty, for beauty, for interest and good example”
(Henry James (1843-1916), “Italian Tours”)